Gosford Anglican Church's Father Rod Bower and his signs of the times

Damien Murphy

The leadership of Australia’s mainstream churches may sometimes seem slightly silent on boat people, but a Gosford Anglican reverend is at the forefront of a grassroots movement impatient with waiting for religious hierarchies to get their acts together.

Father Rod Bower’s pithy and sometimes trenchant musings appear daily on the notice board outside his church in Mann Street, Gosford.

On Monday he posted: "Joining our hearts to the disappeared’’ to encapsulate concern about the fate of Sri Lankans handed over by the Abbott government to Colombo authorities.

On Sunday he put up a sign: ‘‘Wishing our Muslim friends a holy Ramadan’’. Saturday’s ‘‘Acknowledging 50,000 years of settlement’’ was a direct slap in the face to the Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s words on the eve of NAIDOC Week.

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‘‘Mr Abbott's Freudian Slip with regard to Australia's First Nations history was telling. It not only betrayed his Euro-centric world view and his lack of appreciation of Indigenous culture but also revealed that to him land has no value other than economic. For Mr Abbott the environment is a commodity to be exploited and nothing more...Explains a lot really,’’ Fr Bower said.

Born near the Barrington Tops, he entered the family meat trade before going to theological college at 27.

‘‘Sadly the media tends to ignore statements put out by the bishops,’’ he said. ‘‘Churches take a really long time to change and its usually achieved by people chipping away at the edges... there is a clear understanding of what my signs represent."

‘‘I am often criticised by my Christian brothers and sisters for not putting biblical things on the sign (whatever that means). So I was reflecting on our current situation with asylum seekers in the context of Holy Scripture, and not being one for quoting long slabs of sacred text I thought I would use the shortest verse available: